In agony, the gift - the blessing of pain
The Demon Seated, 1890, Mikhail Vrubel - Tretyakov Museum, Moscow - “I am convinced that the only Hell which exists is an inability to love.” Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
After resigning from my summer job, and the summer, not having yet started, it was May 2002, and I was feeling horribly disheartened. From doctor to doctor, from antibiotics to naturopath-recommended tablets, supplements, powders, and protein shakes, this in the time before my diagnosis, I lived in an agonizing limbo, suffering while waiting to see the specialist, the heralded gastroenterologist. All the physicians and nurses I’d seen up to that point, whether at clinics or emergency, kept telling me the same thing: wait until your appointment.
Not so much the most comforting thing to hear. None of those men and women could offer any further advice or consolation. Back then, I couldn’t help but think, these people who’ve spent years and years in medical school, what have they really learned? They weren’t doctors but walking pharmacopoeias with limits.
First glimpse of others in pain
And I’d been a witness. In mid-May 2002, in emergency at the General, a former hospital in St. Catharines, Ontario, I’d been waiting, now for hours and looking up from my Bible, the Book of Job, I scanned my surroundings. Around the room were so many faces sunk in despair, in agony and furrowed worry. The atmosphere radiated quiet; tired whispers went back and forth. There was a boy, red-faced, tears running down his cheeks beside his father. A pale little girl held a Lion King, Simba stuffed doll. A mother consoled her thin teen daughter by rubbing her right shoulder. The straw-haired teen stared vacantly off into space.
And in amongst these ailing ones, I spotted two gnarled and wizened hands clasping the knob of a wooden cane. A stalwart face above, chin lowered to knuckles, and there… there were these two grey caterpillar eyebrows arched over small green eyes. As if in some sort of counterpoint to all this, the elderly man wore a Muskoka t-shirt with a depiction of a shining, red-leafed maple tree. He turned to speak with the woman beside him.
I leaned closer. It sounded like he was speaking with an Eastern European or Russian accent with his wife at his side. She was clad in frumpy jeans and short-sleeved summer blouse, with silver, unfettered hair sweeping to her shoulders, rubbed his knee. Now and then, she darted frazzled glances around the room. Skorah, skorah.
After about fifteen minutes or so, a rosy-faced doctor with dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses appeared. Golydich? The attentive wife shot up her hand. The physician, carrying a clipboard, sauntered over. After introducing himself, he knelt in front of them. “May I see the foot?”
The patient’s pale fingers reached for his sandals, peeling off the Velcro bands. Shucking off the white, stained sock with gnarled hands, the older man revealed the part of him less human, almost leprous. The doctor placed his clipboard down on the empty seat next to the wife. “When I do this…” the young physician asked, hands circling the swollen foot, “does it hurt?”
“No,” the old man said, grimacing. “No.”
For a moment, while watching this moment unfold, an image of Jesus anointing and bathing the feet of his apostles flashed through my mind. The doctor’s rosy-hued thumbs and forefingers pressed in different places, fingertips leaving tiny white circular impressions in the pink-purple flesh. Other patients were drawn in. The girl with her Simba hugged the lion closer in her arms, watching, rapt, lips open. The quietly-sobbing child beside his father looked on, lids blinking, his weeping momentarily settled by this distraction. And the teen, as if breaking from her comatose staring, turned to take in the spectacle.
Hmmm, the doctor murmured. The old man flinched as the doctor wove his hand around the ankle. “There, little. Yes. Pain. Pain.” The hurt seemed to cut through his whispered words. After standing up, the young doctor reclaimed his clipboard. He lifted a page. “It says here, you are on steroids for arthritis. What I’m seeing, your foot is swollen, a side effect of the medication. Sometimes one foot, sometimes both. For you, I recommend tapering the prednisone.”
“He to do what?” the wife asked in her thick accent.
“Take half a pill less a day.”
She put out a hand. “That it?”
“That’s it. All for now. All I can do. Got it? Do that, and we’ll go from there.” She nodded, said something to her husband, the word ‘nasock’ came through. Responding, the husband grabbed his sock. The doctor cleared his throat. “And I recommend you consult your family doctor.”
“He on holiday.”
“When he gets back, then. Okay?”
“Yes, yes.” She nodded, and it reminded me of a well-behaved child. Her husband’s sock back on, they stood, each taking turns shaking the doctor’s hand. “My pleasure,” he said. After grabbing her purse, she placed her hand in the crook of her husband’s arm and led him slowly to the exit. His cane tap-tapped on the floor like a slow clock’s pendulum.
And that was it. The doctor went off, clipboard in hand, rubbing his nose, satisfied. And the older couple, who had progressed through their wait, arrived at their ‘when’, their appearance on the doctor’s stage, only for a moment. The curtains fell. It was less a reality, more a pantomime of healing and protective guidance. Still, I envied them. The others as well judging by their long stares. Watching them walk away, I heard the couple chuckling, their light Slavic banter, their jovial closeness and care for each other.
“Physicians pour drugs of which they known little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into humans of which they know nothing.”
Days of tribulation, desperately seeking
Job and his Friends, 1866, Gustave Doré - from illustrations for Le Grande Bible de Tours “Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: for he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole.” Job 5:17-18 (KJV)
What I remember of that couple is their beauty, their love and their naïveté. I feel blessed that I had encountered them, even if from a distance and for a short time. A version of myself, not ill, would have not had the opportunity to appreciate this moment that unfolded and would gently mark me. And others too were drawn into that moment. While we, myself and the other onlookers, all wanted the supposed care of that doctor, I am sure we felt relieved when the couple got up and were sent off, their advice pocketed. We all felt a passing instance of compassion.
But that openness, that love of strangers faded. In May 2002, I existed in this harsh limbo that distracted me. I would describe it as this tenuous and varied barrier between life and death. Aside from the pain, my sleep was horrid. Waking and sleeping… there was never a feeling of being in one moment completely. While awake, I dragged myself along, exhausted. And while half in sleep, I felt fiendishly awake. The bleeding continued daily, nightly, as if a demon were gnawing my insides. Nothing I took improved my situation, and I was on Immodium, mainly because it kept the worst of the agony at bay.
That vulnerability kept me sensitive. When I was outside, temporarily out and about on my bike, seeing people, even from a distance, though I was envious of them, their supposed strength and vitality, I longed for their company. I felt this yearning to be closer to people, and yet I didn’t want to be closer to myself. This in turn made me question if others might want me closer. I felt subhuman, while they glowed like personifications of everything I wasn’t. I felt angry, resentful, worthless. In many ways, I could relate to Job when he says: “I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.” (Job 10:19)
The medication, when I eventually received it, didn’t heal this adamant self-rejection inside me. Instead, I sought out friendship, superficially hoping being with people would help. I figured, be easy-going and friendly. Stop being serious. Stop being myself. With this bland advice as a reaction to the illness, as my correction, it was no wonder the agony returned. In February 2003 when I found myself unstable in my digestion, I was turning to prayer for consolation. Prayer because I understood in my hurting heart, these doctors and naturopaths couldn’t help. I myself didn’t know what needed to be done. My body did. Yet desperate, in hope of external guidance I didn’t listen to my heart and sought out a new naturopath, thinking, this one will be better than the one the previous year.
Dr. Brindisi, the naturopath, planted seeds. He educated me about the vocabulary of illness, how words ending in ‘itis’ meant inflammation. He spoke about Circadian Rhythms, and emotions, asking me while pointing at my gut, what’s your fire? Why are you angry? I nodded, listening and came away with a list of expensive supplements, thankful, but mute, in the hours and days after my appointments, seemingly unable to offer answers to these questions. Soon enough, when complications arose due to one herb, I stopped seeing him. I wanted the external to save me, so with the supplements proving useless, I sought other doctors who would mangle up my life more than Dr. R. could have (more on him, you can listen to my podcast, The Man With the God-Shaped Hole in His Heart).
In early spring, free of the hospital, discharged, I fell back into the world, fell back to my hapless and depleted self. Reiki helped but Reiki, while soothing the pain, bringing me back to a state of wholeness, didn’t get to the core of the pain. It was a spiritual supplement and I valued it but understood, there would be more seeking.
I had a past life regression (medicinal metempsychosis) and that pulled me back from near death. Yet trying to reclaim my old life, returning from B.C. to Ontario, to finish school and live with my brother and father. No. The old life was dying. The illness had burnt that bridge. I would have to go somewhere else and back to B.C.
Outside myself
Looking back, I know there was a blessing in the agony I endured. From my childhood onward, I’d been navigating through the world with this stubborn and tight-lipped stoicism. As a child, I’d fallen off my bike, landing on my chin, shattering it. The emergency doctor remarked to my father that I didn’t make a peep as he sewed me up. In elementary school, I would be bullied, but I would brace myself for the next day. It took me a long time to become angry and avenge myself.
Yet it was only until I became sick that I first recognized how distant I was from my self and my heart. While seeking out therapy in 2002, a few weeks shy of becoming ill, I discovered something unique. The therapist had me draw two circles. In one circle, he said this was an ‘experience’ and the second was ‘me’. He asked me to draw my relationship to the experience, and I drew a third circle.
The therapist shook his head. Do you know what this means? No, I crossed my arms. He took a deep breath: it means, that when you look at yourself and your body, you regard them as distinct entities. Separated. From a shamanic perspective, your sense of self is outside your physical being. It has perhaps been like that for years.
When the illness arrived, I would regard my body as separate from me, this demonic, idiotic double, this other I had to put up with and tolerate. (For those readers who might be gamers, it felt like I was trying to complete an escort mission with the most competent A.I.)
The illness remained, returned in variations because I had not yet changed. Even crossing the continent, going from Ontario to British Columbia in the summer of 2003, my healing would only arrive when I revealed myself to my heart, when I connected to my sense of compassion and self-unity. Before getting sick, I’d already been in pieces. The ulcerative colitis was the physical reflection of the person I was prior to the symptoms. Shattered, but not without hope.
“How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did not heal but by degrees?”
Towards myself - first step is the deepest…
The process of self-reclamation began with one monument and yet incremental step.
While the medicinal metempsychosis proved beneficial, alleviating the symptoms for a while, it wasn’t so much further regression therapy that healed me, more, a remarkable and emotionally significant shift in my attitude. I have come to call such shifts healing epiphanies.
This first one occurred in late 2004. Though I had sought out the company of others in 2002, hoping being with people would heal me, I had been resistant, in my heart, to be more open. So, in November, because I regarded myself as ill and thin and sickly-looking, I figured people, my peers at the university, would reject me. I had to correct my attitude. In the words of my mother quoting the Bible, I was hiding my light under a bushel (Mark 4:21). The illness, she observed, was my shield and I shunned others in anticipation of potentially being shunned. Or bullied (as I had been in elementary school). The ulcerative colitis served my limited vision of myself and my relation to others.
Her advice, her words: screw the past, let it go and be with people. Listen to them. Stop looking at the disease as this demon and more this gift. You are a great listener so listen to people but also know, the illness has made you more human, more sensitive and kind. Be with that kindness when you are with people. You’ve been broken, and you’re only going to repair yourself by loving the broken parts inside yourself and in others. We’re all broken, and there is no shame in that. Embrace it, love it, and love others as you love yourself.
Nervous, angered that I couldn’t find the magic bullet, that I had to keep trying and trying, I relented and yes, saw her point. And so the next morning, I boarded the bus to school and when I arrived, instead of sitting off to the side or hoping to hurry home quickly after my lectures, I placed myself in the company of others. And for my part, no more fears and judgements: I didn’t regard their conversations as barriers I couldn’t breach or climb over. Nor did I see them as perfect and me imperfect, me subhuman, them better than human, more superior to me.
I listened to the people around me and in so doing, discovered, quite surprisingly, their pains and sorrows. As students, they had pressures and I began to feel for them. One girl I learned that morning was pregnant, and the father had slipped off to Vancouver. Another student was under stress from his father to focus on psychology. His father was a lawyer, and he had for a time convinced his dad that theatre was preparation for law school. But the young man wasn’t sure if he should, one day, bow under the pressure and head in this legal direction.
The next day I learned a girl in the upper class had cystic fibrosis, and it hurt my heart. She was so beautiful and kind, my heart going out to her as it did with that Slavic couple years ago in emergency at the St. Catharines General. That glimpse of compassion became blinding.
This simple miracle of being with people and being with them, with an open heart, a heart open to them and me proved to beneficial. Up to that point, I’d been back on the prednisone, but I weened myself off it once the blood stopped.
Job and his Friends, 1869, Ilya Repin - Russian Museum. St. Petersburg